Project cancelled

This book is a romance of failure, a study of the frequent inability of men in groups to realize the immense potentials of an effort shared. A remarkable insider's view of decision-making in a critical industry — British aerospace design and manufacturing, it shows how bureaucracy can defeat productive capacity and destroy creative genius in virtually any joint human endeavor. Since the end of the Second World War the British aircraft industry has been plagued by a succession of questionable political and commercial decisions which, all too frequently, have resulted in that country's loss not only of vital technological leads over other countries. but also of substantial domestic and export business. This gradual starvation of a potentially lucrative and prestigious industry has had far-reaching consequences: the number of British aircraft in service today with the air forces and airlines of other nations is a dismal fraction of what it might have been had personal prejudice and political mismanagement not prevailed. It is also sobering for Englishmen to reflect that the most modern aircraft in service in Britain — both military and civil — are either foreign-built or, at best, the result of collaborative ventures.

In Project Cancelled Derek Wood, London editor of Interavia since 1953, examines in detail those aviation projects whose abandonment has led to the irretrievable decline of Britain's aerospace industry. Beginning with the immediate post-war period, he discusses the grounds for the intense controversy that led to the cancellation of the revolutionary Miles M52, an aircraft that would have ensured Britain's lead in the supersonic race, providing an enormous boon to the country's economy at a time when it was desperately needed. Unfortunately, the design was discarded before even a prototype could be built. The book goes on to tell the story of the development and eventual demise of many famous aircraft, as well as of those less well-known — such as the Avro 730 supersonic bomber and the brilliant Camm-designed Hawker P1121.

A feature of the book is its series, never before collected together, of design blueprints and artists's renderings of prototypes for aircraft that never flew. Derek Wood has been an aviation and military writer for twenty-five years. He has been London editor of Interavia, an international group of aviation publications, since 1953. In 1961, he became air correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph. Mr. Wood was the originator and co-author of The Narrow Margin, the story of the battle of Britain, upon which the film of that title was based. Married, with two children, he lives at Cuckfield in Sussex. One of his spare time interests is the Royal Observer Corps — in which he has served for twenty-eight years.

(Source : flyingbooks.co.uk)

ISBN 0356081095